The head of the Professional Footballers’ Association Gordon Taylor has apologised for comparing Ched Evans’ attempt to clear his name with the Hillsborough disaster.

Taylor made the comments in a radio interview after it emerged that ex-Sheffield United striker Evans’ proposed move to Oldham had collapsed amid threats to club staff and their families.

He said Evans, who is protesting his innocence after spending two and a half years behind bars for raping a woman in a hotel room in North Wales, was not ‘the first person to have been found guilty and maintained their innocence and then been proved right’.

He then went on to mention the Hillsborough disaster and how events were portrayed at the time were ‘very different’ to how they are being portrayed today.

But Taylor has now apologised for his analogy.

“The point I was making was not to embarrass or upset anybody at all among the Liverpool supporters. I’m very much an admirer of them and they know that,” he said.

“That was never my intention but it was the fact that how things at one time can be perceived one way but come out very differently with the passage of time.

“If people feel that way (offended) about what I said, I can only apologise.”

Evans’ case is being looked at by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.